


Will You Wait for Me?

by TongueTiedandSqueamish



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: A bit of non-linear narrative mixed in, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abuse, M/M, Slow Burn, by Burr's terrible uncle towards Burr, considering they are but children when this begins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-05-29 18:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6389152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TongueTiedandSqueamish/pseuds/TongueTiedandSqueamish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When his father left, Alexander Hamilton and his mother moved to New York. When his mother died two years later, twelve year old Alexander, in the midst of a fever-induced delirium, took his mother's savings, hopped on the first bus out of town, and ended up across the Hudson River in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he was saved by a miserable Aaron Burr, freshly rejected from Princeton University.</p><p>Alexander, without family and without money, is adopted by Burr's family. Both Aaron and Alexander debate whether this is a blessing or a curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Slip back, out of whack at your best

**Author's Note:**

> This story begins in 1982, Burr having been born in '71 and Hamilton in '70. This originally started out as a songfic for Under Cover of Darkness by the Strokes but quickly got out of my control. Considering in real life Hamilton _did_ briefly live in Elizabeth, New Jersey where Burr had grown up (although in real life, Burr was in Connecticut with Tapping Reeve when Hamilton was in Elizabeth), I was all too tempted to make this story.
> 
> This is also supposed to be seven parts, but that might change drastically knowing myself, haha.

The rejection letter weighed as heavy as a brick in his hands. “Too young,” the letter said with polite, appeasing words. “Don’t you want to be a kid?”

When he had applied, Tapping Reeve had whistled. “Princeton, at your age? And I imagined myself precocious for attending at fifteen.”

“Oh my _God_ , Aaron,” Sally had chastised (under her breath, so neither Uncle Timothy nor Aunt Rhoda would hear). “Relax for half of a second!”

Matthias and Aaron Ogden had laughed and slapped each other on the back. “The runaway’s trying to run away again!”

Jonathan Dayton had smiled in that calm, befuddled way of his. “I don’t know if they’ll want you, but they’d be lucky to have you.”

And Uncle Timothy had spared him a glance out of the corner of his eye, as if sizing up a fly, and decreed, “I am glad you are taking advantage of your God-given talents. Time will tell if He has deemed you worthy of them.”

No, he did not want to be a child.

Aaron had been ten when he applied to Princeton University, had sent in his application as soon as he could. Now, in March, he was eleven and the defeat weighed that much heavier on his shoulders. In a fit of rage that clutched him ( _like the Devil sinking his claws into your heart_ ), he tore the letter into shreds and flung them out the window and suppressed a scream that threatened to shake the house off its foundation.

It took a few minutes to realize his mistake. He paced back and forth from one bedroom wall to the other, almost stomping, on the edge of throwing himself to the ground and crying like the child everyone expected of him; instead, he pulled his hair, little though there was from Aunt Rhoda’s nice, neat trimmings, and grinded his teeth until the muscles in his jaw pulsed with pain and his teeth felt cracked. What had he done wrong? Was it his homeschooled background? Was Tapping not a qualified tutor? Had his essays been lacking? Should he have taken advantage of his status as an orphan? He didn’t care about his parents, they were shadows that had entrusted him and Sally to Timothy Edwards and left with excuses of illness and he could not—

The letter!

Aaron rushed to the window, aghast at his own stupidity. Below, not a single scrap of the Princeton letter remained in sight, blown away by the brisk wind that heralded an approaching storm. The letter he had stolen from the mailbox to read in the safe and dim confines of his room in the gray post-dawn before anyone could intercept it. He had planned to keep it under his bed for a week and slip it in next week’s mail, unnoticed, but now his own foul temper had ruined it all.

(There, that darkness implanted by repetition and immovable confidence rose to shackle him down. The phantom appeared to assess his caliber and find him lacking. The voice slid into his ear and wound around his bones. The blow fell to his cheek, his chest, whatever was in reach. The memories flashed by, scenes with deep, exaggerated grooves from constant revisitations:

Summer, the sun shining too bright, half-blinding him and throwing the towering figure into a haloed black silhouette, hands behind its back in a pretended show of civility. “Aaron,” the voice intoned with the authority of a judge. “Aaron Burr, Jr., what would your parents think of you now?” “. . . i dunno . . .” “They would be ashamed to call you their son. Do you know why?” “. . . i dunno . . .” One hand reached out to grip his jaw, fingers digging into his cheeks, preventing him from talking or moving. “You never listen. You never restrain yourself. You are a _coward_. God is grooming you for greatness, and you are spurning him to play in Hell.” Tears welled in his eyes.

Fall, the sky glazed over in an early chill, and he could not see past the tears as the figure grabbed him by the collar and threw him to the ground. “You ingrate! You horrible little creature! You demon!” Its limbs split into many that barrage him in swift, unforgiving, righteous fury. “You run away? Your life here is perfect! We give you everything! You squander it! Your name, your wealth, your family, your religion, your soul!” The taste of metal in his mouth.

Winter, the room lit by the hulking gas-lit chandelier hanging like a blunt guillotine overhead. “Aaron,” the figure said, smiling in the relaxed, jovial way of an uncle. “Could you lead us in the Lord’s prayer tonight?” His throat closed up, and he did not know how to fake ease yet. He stared, the chandelier swung, and the guise of a relative hardened into disappointment on the figure’s face, the expression he imagined his father would make if he were alive. _May God rest his soul_.

Sometimes, after the words had rang and the blows had struck, when he was out of range of the piercing looks and the heavy hand, he believed them. Sometimes, he deserved them. The nasty condemnations, the holy denouncements. Sometimes—)

Aaron was on the streets before he knew what he was doing, backpack slung over his shoulders filled with a couple of bottles of water, a sandwich, and some snacks. It had taken less than five minutes to prepare. He had done this too many times.

Running was futile, ( _Why else would you want to go to Princeton?_ ) and Aaron knew it. He had been running since he could outsmart Rhoda’s laser-strict attention for detail and Tim’s goggle-eyed ’65 Chrysler that swept the streets and cruised low like a German U-boat, and it had never ended well or given him the cheap satisfaction of feeling better about himself. It ended in quotas of shouts, bruises, and slander that would make politicians blanch. Sally would hold his hand, Tapping would ask in an awkward whisper if he was all right, and Jonathan would frown and say nothing the next time they saw each other. Useless.

But the streets were familiar, the buildings and fences confidantes that sheltered him on his path through yards and parks and busy intersections. The farther he walked, the easier he could breathe, the Princeton letter lost and the future wrath a containable and thus forgettable threat on the far horizon.

Deep breaths.

Elizabeth, New Jersey was identical in texture and style to any other old New England city. Archaic buildings rubbed cheeks with ultra-modern conveniences of gas stations and fast food restaurants, an affect that together initially repulsed the eye but in time gave the affectionate impression of a well-worn patchwork quilt passed down through the generations; an impression of a long history modern cities like Los Angeles imitated by forcefully stuffing its city with recognizable landmarks. Elizabeth, little over an hour from Brooklyn or Manhattan, had an overexcited bustle to its streets, as if trying to feed off New York’s famous madness and shiny skyscrapers and reflect its own humble version back across the Hudson. It was a city torn, unknowingly so in its eagerness, between progress and history, between phoenix resurrection and Egyptian preservation, its head wagging back and forth between the two like a confused puppy who didn’t understand antitheses could not abide one another. Aaron himself was torn over the city. On a surface, intellectual level, he despised the city. He passed a construction site and a restoration site within five minutes of each other, and he thought, _Choose a side already_. He passed a building named after a long-dead president and a building named after the local senator, and he thought, _You can’t move forward without choosing a path._ Aaron stared up at the ceiling of his room many a night knowing with the clarity of youth that he knew the world better than they – “they” being “all” – and simultaneously with the ignorance of youth knew nothing of himself, how his mind chewed on a problem like a teething puppy, prolonging the relinquishment until every corner could be explored and every point could be pressed. But Aaron also loved the city on a deep, subconscious level. He knew the cracks in the sidewalks and noted when new ones formed; he knew the view across the dirty water filled with dreary ships; he knew the squared plots of nature cloistered in the urbanity as if in apology to the dead forests; he knew the people, like shy, flustered twenty-two year old Tapping Reeve and reassuringly underwhelming fourteen year old Jonathan Dayton and the hopefuls of all ages skidding by in fast cars and the kids screaming as they played chicken on corners. Elizabeth was home, and while it would take years of distance to admit it, he would miss it.

He couldn’t lose himself in the roads and boulevards anymore, but he pretended he could. He sipped water and stuffed chips in his mouth and watched the sun rise to noon height and begin falling down the other side of the sky and idly thought perhaps humanity was Sisyphus, each person pushing the boulder of their life each day and restarting every morning until the boulder crushed them under its weight. ( _Your thoughts never show any faith._ ) The coming storm remained on the edges of the sky, threatening with echoed thunder and distant lightning without a direct attack. He pretended he was not running but taking a long stroll. He passed an eighteenth century art gallery with a sign outside commanding, DO NOT TAKE PICTURES OF THE ART WORK! and he thought, _Choose a side already_.

Distracted in his pretending as he was, Aaron tripped and nearly fell over the body when he cut through a park.

Shock froze his mind in its twist of _dead dead DEEEEAAAD_ and then it shattered as he sunk to his knees beside the body and saw a sudden wheeze expand the skinny chest – not dead. It was a kid his age, heat radiating off his body like a furnace but his arms and legs gathered close in with feathery shivers, his skin clammy and colorless and his dark hair and clothes damp with sweat and stained with sick.

“Hey . . . are you . . . okay?” Aaron raced through his options as his tongue stumbled through its question.

The kid’s eyes blinked open just barely and glazed over him. “F-flight to P-uer-to-Ri-co,” the boy slurred, then closed his eyes again, brow furrowing. “Wait, no . . . ’M not . . . Mamá, where’m I from . . .?”

 _Not good_. Aaron stood up and ran towards a jogger passing by unawares, while the boy mumbled, “No no n-no, not _Me_ -xi-co . . .” Aaron grabbed the jogger’s arm and said, “Ma’am!”

Annoyed, the woman pulled her headphones down to hang around her neck and hit Stop on her Walkman. “What do you want, kid?”

His fist tightened at the title but he pointed to the collapsed body half-obscured in the grass. “Shit!” the woman yelled, holding a hand over her mouth. “Ma’am,” Aaron went on, “do you have money for a taxi to the hospital? I found that guy and he looks half-dead.”

“Oh, um, yeah.” The woman rooted through her pockets and came up with a couple of tens folded together. “I was gonna get a late lunch, but – hey, you get the kid, I’ll hail a cab, okay?”

They split up, the jogger rushing towards the curb and Aaron to the boy, who had fallen silent, muscles slack and shivers ceased. Panicked, Aaron shook his shoulder and the boy shivered again and rattled off messily, “Uh duh twah caht sahnk sees seht. . .”

_French?_

Surprised, Aaron murmured back on instinct, “ _Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix_.” Aunt Rhoda had drilled French into he and Sally’s heads since they had been children, words recited again and again and again until they lost meaning.

Eyes closed, the boy repeated, “Seht weet noof . . .,” and lost his strength to finish the set.

For the first time, Aaron’s gaze cleared and he saw the boy’s face, apart from the pallor and the sweat and the crushed grass underneath him and Elizabeth, New Jersey around him. The boy had a face for honesty, features round and open, soft and uncertain in the fashion of prepubescence that would harden into a fine and handsome arrogance. A face meant to display, beautiful in triumph, ugly in heartbreak, an exaggeration of itself with the large eyes and arched brow. A bull. This boy reminded him of a stubborn bucking bull trembling under the weight of oppressive riders and sharp sticks and a laughing, jeering crowd but still refusing to go down.

“Sehtweetnoof . . .,” the boy whispered in a jumbled stream of nonsense sounds that knocked Aaron out of his reverie. He grabbed his shoulders and pulled him up, the kid’s feet kicking with the half-hearted intention of walking but his full weight almost toppling Aaron to the ground. Aaron hooked an arm around the other’s shoulders and walked them backwards towards the curb where the woman had her head stuck inside the cab’s passenger window. “Ten bucks for a phone call?” she shouted, pounding a fist on the retracted window track. “That’s a fucking scam and you know it! There’s a kid fucking _dying_ and you’re trying to rip me off? What the hell is wrong with you!” The boy’s head lolled onto Aaron’s shoulder and grumbled something. Aaron cleared his throat. “Ma’am?” His voice was sharper than he had intended.

The woman recoiled, hitting her head on the upper rim of the door. “Fuck!” she cursed, rubbing her head as she turned to them. “Hey! Okay, let’s get this guy bundled in—” She yanked open the back door, pausing to shoot the cabbie another venomous glare, and then winced and swore in support as Aaron awkwardly backed into the car without hitting the kid’s head. They ended up slumped side-by-side next to the door, the sick boy leaning and shivering and mumbling against Aaron. The woman reached out to grasp Aaron’s hand and smile. “This guy’ll let you call your parents on his mobile phone so they can meet you at the hospital as quick as possible, okay? Good luck, kid!” With that, she threw her money at the cabbie, slammed the door, and waved them off. The cabbie huffed under his breath and shoved the plastic brick phone into Aaron’s hands and everything blurred together after that.

~~~~~

The entire household arrived: Uncle Timothy, Aunt Rhoda, four year old Edward holding her hand, six year old Sarah walking with her head tossed high beside them, and Sally and Tapping a step behind. Each took note in their own time, even the small Edward, of the backpack stuffed under Aaron’s chair, but none of them commented, though Tim glowered and Sally encouraged her little brother with a forced smile.

“When are we going?” Sarah whined. The boy in the hospital bed shook and sweated and wheezed and watching a person die was wholly uninteresting to a young child.

“When this young man that Aaron saved wakes up, dearest,” Tim told his daughter, a touch too cold.

“That might be at least two or more days, sir,” the doctor interrupted politely. “The patient is dealing with a severe fever that has had substantial time to wear down his immune system. We are doing the best we can, but his chances are grim, and if he does make it, it will take more than a few hours of rest to recover.”

Uncle Timothy nodded. “We’ll leave then. Please call us if anything happens.”

The doctor permitted them to briefly stand around the boy’s bed and say a prayer for his health as long as they did not touch him. That night, Aaron repeated the words for thirty minutes knelt beside his bed and Tim, assessing him up and down when he barged into his bedroom unannounced, nodded and did not mention Aaron’s backpack full of supplies sitting on the bed. “Do better,” he told Aaron with an attempt at an approving, friendly squeeze to Aaron’s shoulder. “You can always do better.”

Aaron kept his mouth shut and continued to pray for that odd, odd boy.

~~~~~

Who was he?

How did he get there?

Where were his parents?

Would he remember anything?

Where had he been trying to go?

How many languages could he speak?

Would he have permanent damage from the fever?

What was his name?

~~~~~

“Alexander Hamilton,” Sally said. “His name is Alexander Hamilton. And get this. Apparently, he’s still a bit delirious, so after he told them that, he started humming and mumbling, ‘There’s a million things I haven’t done, but just you wait.’ What a kook! Of course this is the sort of kid you rescue, a whackjob.” She laughed and smoothed down her ruffled skirt. “But anyway, they say he’ll be good to go in two more days.”

“Thanks for telling me.” Aaron nodded, questions doubling and tripling inside his head.

“No prob, Bob.” Sally kissed his cheek and flounced out of his room in a swirl of skirts.

~~~~~

As the hospital cleared Alexander Hamilton for discharge, Tim interrogated him and Aaron witnessed with his breath held for fear of disturbing the scene.

“So, Alexander, how old are you?” Tim was a horrible manipulator with obvious tells, his tone edged with a suspicion he couldn’t hide and his posture leaned too forward, too intent on the reply, issuing a silent command to answer and answer honestly.

Alexander did not pay him heed, his unfocused gaze on the far wall. He laid limp on the sheets, thin and haggard and hands clasped together to stop a tremble. “Twelve.”

“Where are you from?”

“Caribbean. Been living in New York.”

“With whom?”

“My mom,” he whispered.

“Where is she?”

“She was sick, too.” And he refused to say another word on the matter. Aaron wondered if that was how he was supposed to feel about his dead mother.

“Your father?” Tim pressed on.

Alexander shook his head.

“Relatives? Friends of the family?”

Alexander shook his head.

“Well, if this isn’t a sign from God, I’m not sure what is.” Uncle Timothy touched Alexander’s arm and tried for an optimistic, heart-lifting smile. “We have the means, you have the need. Would you like to stay with us?”

Alexander’s eyes shifted from the wall, but he looked to Aaron instead of Uncle Timothy, asking, _I’m so tired. Is this a good place to rest?_ Aaron couldn’t move, couldn’t sense what his expression showed, but Alexander broke away again and shrugged. “I have nowhere else to go.”

“Then welcome to the Edwards-Burr household, Alexander.”

~~~~~

The Edwards-Burr household was, in actuality, the Edwards-Burr-Reeve-sometimes-Ogden household. (And now it was Edwards-Burr-Reeve-Hamilton-sometimes-Ogden.) The property wavered between “large house” and “small estate,” the main house with six bedrooms, the guest house with three, a lavish garden hugging the boundaries of a greenhouse, and a wide circle driveway to distance the house from the street. Uncle Timothy and Aunt Rhoda lived downstairs next to the semi-permanent nursery (Rhoda was pregnant again) and the rest lived upstairs, Sarah and Edward sharing a room and the others on their own. Timothy had bought the house on his famous father’s dime when he was a nineteen year old bachelor – and then he inherited two orphans, and then he married, and then those orphans needed a tutor, and then he had children of his own . . . The house had filled up remarkably quickly in ten years without mentioning Rhoda’s family weaving in and out every other day, especially her younger brothers Aaron and Matthias Ogden, who were Aaron’s age.

In short, a crowded mess, a house that constantly moved and shook with an activity that drove Tapping mad and that Aaron had learned to tune out years ago.

Now, to test the breaking point, one more resident, a scrappy pre-teen with bags under his eyes and wearing his grief like a heavy coat.

They pushed a spare mattress into Aaron’s room and it became Alexander’s room, too.

“Do you have anything you want to bring from your other house?” Aunt Rhoda asked, her hands flitting around her body with the restrained urge to smooth Alexander’s unruly hair.

“Do you have a library?” Alexander asked in return.

“Yes. Aaron and Sally are voracious readers, and Ta—”

“Then no.”

Rhoda’s mouth pressed into a stern line, but restrained it into a smile and patted Aaron on the shoulder. “Aaron, why don’t you show Alexander the library?”

At dinner, Alexander bowed his head without being told, and when Uncle Timothy asked if he knew the Lord’s prayer, Alexander recited it without pause, but at night he kicked the blankets Aaron had carefully made to the foot of the bed and slept with his face smashed against the wall while Aaron prayed for his health a few feet away.

“Hello, Mr. Hamilton, my name is Tapping Reeve,” Tapping said with his hand extended politely, which Alexander took as one would an electric eel. “I am the instructor for Mr. Burr and Miss Burr, and now my tutelage will expand to you as well. What grade were you placed in public school?”

“Eighth,” Alexander announced with a knowing smugness. “They would have placed me in ninth or tenth, but they said they were afraid I was _too young_.” He snorted.

 _Too young_ echoed down the long hall of Aaron’s thoughts.

“Ah, a scholar!” Tapping said. “Miss Burr is most accomplished herself, and Mr. Burr applied to Princeton University this past fall.”

Alexander’s head snapped to Aaron, his face alive with a surprise that forced his image to stand out in highly saturated, vibrant detail, three-dimensional where he had been flat before. “ _Princeton University?_ ” Alexander breathed, unbelieving, sharp, bright emotions in his voice, his eyes, his legs as he tossed his weight back and forth. His grief had departed; he seemed prepared to take flight. “How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“And his birthday was last month!” Sally interjected proudly.

“Wow.” Alexander stared, and there: the first flame of kinship, of two lives competing in parallel no matter how they diverged temporarily. As Aaron had in the park, Alexander saw Aaron Burr clearly for the first time. He snapped back to Tapping with a command. “Whatever you gave him, give me one better.”


	2. It's a nightmare

For two years, the space between his rejection to Princeton and acceptance to Princeton, Aaron wrote poetry. He was eleven, twelve, then thirteen, and the words would spill off his pen in swirls and smudges, his stanzas thick, his lines long, teetering on the edge of fanciful prose if not for its lack of coherence, for at least Wolfe’s and Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness feigned structure. No, not Aaron’s – his poetry _talked_. Talked in circles, talked up storms, talked in tongues, talked until the muscles in Aaron’s hand cramped, and then talked after that, sprinting into the distance. If the diction hadn’t matched, short and blunt and missing in metaphor, he would have suspected possession. (His roommate was, after all, the mythological creature Alexander Hamilton.) But he never thought himself a “poet.” Poets wrote for a want of craft or passion; he stumbled into the words he wrote. He picked up pens, intending to leave a note or wander through a physics equation, and then poetry would decorate the page.

“I like it,” Sally told him, flopped onto the floor of his room with her legs propped up on Alexander’s unoccupied bed. Tilting the sheaf of pages like a pack of holographic cards, she repeated, “Yeah, I like it. It’s weird. I feel like I’m inside your head.”

“I expected a joking comparison with Alexander,” he said.

She giggled, an endearing squeal of a sound that followed unexpected humor. “Yeah right. You think Alex would have . . .” She shuffled through the pages until the quote caught her eye. “Would have said, ‘The Earth cracks, and it falls,’ without describing some elaborate apocalypse sequence full of crying angels and spouts of flame?”

“You have me there.”

“No, yours is . . .” Aaron lowered his book to watch Sally tug at a lock of her hair and crumple the page corners. “You write like you’re looking at a photograph and remembering something.” It was easy to forget, with Sally Burr’s irreverence of philosophy and scorn of academia in general, that her mind ran with the best of them. “You write like you’re measuring out time. It’s weird. I like it,” she repeated once more.

When he broke his wrist in December of ’83, Alexander dictated his poems despite his hands shaking in the twenty-eight degree weather and Aaron’s voice unintelligible through tears and under roaring winds. “You should use ‘vociferous’ instead of ‘vehement,’” Alexander suggested.

Aaron laughed through a sob and buried his head against Alexander’s shoulder. “No, ‘vociferous’ is too elegant. ‘Vehement’ sounds like spitting in someone’s face.”

“I wish there was a word that sounds like dousing someone in gasoline and lighting them on fire.” Pressed together against the cold, Aaron felt the tension in Alexander’s arms, the urge to retaliate in violence and cruel wit. Instead, he tapped the page. “Is there a comma or a full stop here?”

The first time he wrote was the night of the Princeton letter confrontation.

A few days after Alexander’s arrival, a week after Aaron destroyed Princeton’s letter, Uncle Timothy insisted on arranging a gathering to welcome Alexander to the family. Despite the impromptu notice, Edwardses and Ogdens arrived in floods, flocks, and fleets of husbands, wives, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, in-laws, and all. Lost in the midst were Jonathan Dayton, his parents, and scattered groupings of other family friends, including Tapping Reeve’s own parents, the Sewards, the Wesleys, the Schuylers, the Whitefields, the Stoddards . . . So many people, so _many_ , Matthias Ogden plucking leaves off manicured bushes when Rhoda’s back was turned, Elias and Hannah Dayton speaking in their usual boisterous shouts, middle-aged Sarah Parsons née Edwards playing with six year old Sarah Edwards, one of the Schuyler sisters braiding other girls’ hair, and Alexander Hamilton had disappeared hours ago.

Out of obligation, Aaron did not follow suit. ( _You are the face of the Burr family_.) Neither did he hole up in a corner with Jon until the prodigious flood receded. He did what was expected of him. He allowed relatives to coo over his manners, his looks, his intelligence, his “grand” destiny, and every time, he became better at faking his smile and suffered fewer moments of blank-faced uncertainty. The adults’ peculiar language swung between cheerful, fake sincerity and serious thoughtfulness. They were all CEOs appraising his worth with that dehumanizing eye, smacking kisses to his cheeks to watch his reaction and praising him to see if he would show humility or confidence – but which did they want? Aaron walked away, deeper into the garden, the droning wail of expectations ringing in his ears. The garden paths meandered in curves and twists that mimicked a maze, which deterred infrequent visitors from venturing deeper than the first turn. Aaron’s first memories were in this maze, playing hide and seek with Sally, cheering her on as she climbed the centerpiece tree, stealing flowers, and crying when Rhoda found out and punished him. The garden lost its appeal with the years, as Aaron recognized its relentless order, as tenacious as the weeds that threatened it.

In the center of the garden was a Shirofugen cherry tree surrounded by low stone benches. Its branches spread over them, inches from caressing the heads of those sitting below, including the young girl who tilted her head up towards its boughs. They were alone in the close circular courtyard. Aaron waited, wondering what would be proper of him. He could unload information on the origin of the tree, how it bloomed late, how its life was short and already past its half-way mark. Or perhaps talk about the garden in general. The upkeep it demanded. The design of the garden paths. Rhoda spoke so often and at length about the garden he could write a ten-page catalog on its history and foundation.

“Hi,” he said instead. Too quiet, neither suave nor confident.

The girl looked down from the tree to where Aaron hesitated a foot inside the courtyard. Her hair was tame, black, and waist-length, falling into her eyes and pushed behind her ear without thought, and her face was round and kind and sad. She smiled and gave a small wave. “Hi.”

He tried not to stumble as he strode over to sit beside her. Pretending was much easier around adults. “My name’s Aaron.”

“Elizabeth, but you can call me Eliza. My sisters do.” She stuck her hand out, he stuck out his, and they shook with the manly dramatics of important men.

“Sisters?” The girl’s face registered to him again, the practiced tilt of the head, the firm set of the shoulders. “Are you—” _a Schuyler sister?_ “—not alone? Where are they?”

Eliza’s smile widened in relief. Her genuine brightness lightened the naturally sad set to her eyes. “Angelica’s probably dazzling everybody, and Peggy’s probably following her or Daddy around.” She blushed and then rubbed at her cheeks trying to hide it. “Dad, I mean. What about you?” she blurted out, the blush growing worse, spreading across her face and down her neck in a rashlike sprawl, until she gave up hiding it and folded her hands in her lap.

Aaron tried to smooth his own smile into a calm, comforting one, but Eliza’s desperate, squeaky voice and miserable blush broke his attempts into a huge grin. “My family’s everywhere, and I don’t care about them at all. Except for my sister, Sally. She’s pretty great. She’s probably hiding like I am.”

The blush held on, refusing to fade. “What do you need to hide for?”

“Why do you?” Aaron asked.

They laughed together, a tense barrier in the air between them shattering. The brightness in Eliza returned. “I don’t know,” Eliza said. “I don’t like the spotlight, and Angelica keeps trying to put me in it.”

“Are you jealous?”

“No!” Her brows knitted together, her uncertainty scrunching up her face in pain. “Maybe? No one’s asked me that before.”

The leaves above them rustled and the branches swayed as a silence fell, warm like the air and Eliza’s eyes. Both seemed content to sit and think and dismiss the distant hollering.

“I should go.” Aaron brushed off his pant legs and stood, looking up at the tree.

“I thought you didn’t care about those people.”

“I don’t, but I have to.” He turned and smiled down at her. “Goodbye, Eliza.”

Her hand reached out, almost grabbed his, but stopped. “Goodbye, Aaron.”

He exited the garden with efficient turns and long strides. The noise of the crowd chafed on the quiet, fresh memories of him and Eliza sitting in the garden. For a crushing half-second he questioned if the world had turned upside-down and he doubted these two locations could coexist.

“Aaron!” Tim barked.

It felt awful to smile. It felt like nailing the corners of his mouth to his cheekbones. Aaron turned around and smiled at his uncle, who gestured for him to join his circle of husbands and wives. When in range of his arms, Tim grabbed both of Aaron’s shoulders and stood the boy in front of himself. “I know you’ve all met my boy here before. But look at him!” Tim squeezed his shoulders and pushed him a step forward, presenting him like the impressive mounted head of a hunted lion. “Just turned eleven and you know what? He’s going to _Princeton_ this fall!”

Everyone cheered and congratulations began to unravel by instinct from their mouths—

“No I’m not.”

The hands on his shoulders clamped down hard.

Tim glared down at him with a smile. “What did you say?”

Aaron pressed his hands to his sides, pressed his lips together, pressed his shoulders down. His mind skipped off its track and raced into darkness, his thoughts chopped up by the interference – chop, chop! “I was rejected from Princeton.” His volume was reasonable. From his irises to his mouth to his heart, he was immobile. He emitted his response via a mechanical relay.

Tim dragged him into the house, into the nursery.

(Spring, the room happy with yellow baby-friendly decorations and the sun leaking in from the window. The figure grasped him by the shoulders, fingers crushing into bruises, and hissed, “When were you rejected from Princeton?” “. . . i stole the letter from the mail . . .” “Get it! I want to see it!” “. . . i ripped it up . . .” The slap landed hard. His head spun from turning too fast. He put his arms over his face, but the figure knocked them down. “What did you do this time, Aaron?” the figure demanded. “What did you do this time? Listen to me!” He couldn’t hear.)

Aaron opened his bedroom door, forgetting he was not alone.

“Jesus Christ!” Alexander shouted. Aaron couldn’t see him, tears blurring his vision into a runny, abstract watercolor.

He retreated from the door, continuing down the hall to the bathroom until a hand on his arm stopped him. Aaron sobbed and covered his face. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

“It’s me, Alexander. I’m not going to hurt you.” Alexander tugged at Aaron’s arm until it dropped. Alexander inhaled sharply. “Who did this to you?” He sounded angry. Aaron inched to the side, pressed against the wall, to escape the anger before Alexander could strike out. “Hey! Who did this to you?”

Aaron flinched. “D-don’t,” he stuttered.

“I’m not gonna hurt you! Tell me who did this so I can hurt _them_!”

“No! No, don’t, n-no, Alexander, no, please don’t, I’m so sorry, don’t—”

Alexander sighed, hard and angry. “Come here, at least let me help you clean up. Your face is swelling up.”

Alexander sat Aaron on his bed, grabbed a washcloth, and ran it under the tap. Aaron wrung his hands and stared with a blank, automaton expression that terrified Alexander, reminded him of starving kids in St. Croix. Alexander exuded fury as he swiped away the blood from Aaron’s cut lip and cheek and went downstairs to prepare an ice pack. One of Aaron’s eyes began to close up. Alexander paced, fists clenched. Aaron dragged a blanket over his shoulders and laid down, ice pack held to his eye.

“Who did this?” Alexander demanded.

No answer.

“Are you protecting whoever it is? That’s disgusting. They deserve to go to jail! Who does this?”

 _Tim, Tim, it’s Tim._ “Why do you care?” Aaron asked. The panic had slowed and gone dormant in his skin once more, leaving him empty and unconcerned. Alexander had no reason to care when Aaron himself did not.

They went in circles. Aaron refusing, Alexander insisting, until the latter threw up his arms and left. Aaron dropped the ice pack on the floor and slept.

~~~~~

The door slammed open, slammed shut. Aaron’s eyes flew open but he remained motionless.

Alexander knelt by Aaron’s bed. His shirt was not rumpled, and his face did not swell. “As long as I’m around, that’s never going to happen again,” Alexander told him.

( _You deserved it_.)

“I deserved it.”

Alexander laughed, harsh. “A lie doesn’t merit a beating.”

“I failed.”

“No, you didn’t,” Alexander said firmly. “The fuckwits at Princeton thought you were a kid. Those fuckwits at the educational board in New York thought I was a kid. So we’re going to prove them wrong. We’re going to blow them all away.”

 _A bull_ , Aaron remembered.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Alexander grinned, the adult steel in his spine softening into a twelve year old spring. “You’re welcome.”

~~~~~

Jonathan Dayton lived down the street where the wealthy houses transitioned from “absurd trust fund inheritance” to “hard-working, self-made, and lucky.” The Dayton’s house lacked significant grounds but appeared bigger than the Edwards-Burr house for its lack of occupants. Often, Jon was alone while his mother and father worked and enjoyed nights on the town and worked and took business trips to exotic locales and worked. In response, Jon, with his fourteen years, possessed the manners of a man three times his age. As Aaron and Alexander walked up the street, he sat on the front porch smoking his father’s unused pipe and reading the politics section of the newspaper delivered yesterday.

“Alexander, this is Jonathan Dayton. Jon, this is Alexander Hamilton,” Aaron introduced.

Jon inclined his head. “A pleasure.”

“What kind of teenager smokes a pipe?” Alexander asked, ignoring social graces.

“One with an old soul and an obsession with appearances.” Jon half-smiled around his pipe, puffing out one, two, three clouds of smoke.

“I like you,” Alexander said.

Aaron’s pride stung at that. It reminded him of the stiffness when he moved his shoulders and the constant twinge of his face. “We came for your TV.”

Jon nodded, folded up his newspaper, and led them upstairs to his parents’ room. “The ones everywhere else are sufficient, but theirs is the biggest and clearest,” he explained to Alexander. He powered on the set, grabbed the remote, and sat against the king-sized bed’s headboard, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. Alexander snorted and sat on Jon’s left side, Aaron sat on Jon’s right, and they passed the afternoon with Jon judiciously hopping between the handful of channels.

Uncle Timothy and Aunt Rhoda disliked television and radio as encouragements of sloth, and they actively repelled any discussion involving buying such a device. Meanwhile, the Daytons, a power couple in love with anything modern, flashy, and electronic, stuffed their house with every useless doodad and replicates of those doodads. They had not one, but _two_ personal computers, neither of which had ever been turned on, sitting in the corners of Elias’s and Jon’s studies like tanks that had never been called into battle. Ever since Aaron had known Jon, he (and sometimes Sally) would come over to watch the news and corny sitcoms in companionable silence.

“Ronald Reagan talks as if he’s your next door neighbor or your best friend, and I wish he would stop,” Alexander grouched, squinting at the President speaking on the screen with an unimpressed moue. “How can anyone take him seriously when he has a smile like a creepy uncle?” He elbowed Jon in the side since he couldn’t elbow Aaron. “Like Tim. He has that same creepy smile when he wants something from you.”

With Alexander, it was never silent. Worse, Aaron found himself drawn into arguments.

“You _agree_ with supply-side economics?” Alexander said, expression comically offended. “Taxes _ensure_ that the government has—”

“That isn’t what I said. I said supply-side economics had _potential_ if—”

“How else is the government supposed to—”

“The average consumer can also contribute—”

“Reagan is going to run this country into the ground,” Alexander concluded without conclusion, arms crossed.

Aaron rolled his eyes.

Jon smiled as if sharing a good joke between himself and the air and flipped to the next channel.

~~~~~

“What the hell did you do?” Sally whispered, a cat-clawed grip on Aaron’s sleeve as he climbed the stairs. The flood had drained, five or six relatives remaining to attend the formal dinner while the rest hugged, praised God, and left. No one mentioned the Princeton slip-up or Aaron’s condition except for middle-aged Aunt Sarah’s silken glances, elegance distracting from a Harvard law degree examination. Aunt Sarah was one of the women nominated and rejected to be a Rhodes Scholar before the inclusion of women in ’77, and she made herself famous when a reporter asked, “Miss Edwards, how are you going to take the world by storm? Serve on the Supreme Court? Become a women’s rights leader? Start your own firm?” and Sarah kicked off her graduation high heels, broke the stilettos, threw them in the grass, said, “I’m going to marry my fiance, get pregnant, and become a mother. The men’s world makes me sick and tired, and I want to be happy,” then walked, prim and straightbacked and barefoot, to Elihu Parsons’ waiting car. Lawyers and feminists alike had grieved ever since. Aunt Sarah assessed the swelling, the wooden movements, the inexpertly plastered-on happiness, and scanned on. Unimportant. Normal. Fine. No comment required. “Timmy, tell us again of how you came into custody of this incandescent young Mr. Hamilton?” she remarked instead.

“Incandescent,” Alexander sneered under his breath beside Aaron.

Uncle Timothy held out his palms as if he was an announcer playing to an audience. “Don’t give the credit to me. I’m many things but never immodest. Our Aaron here—” He gestured towards the beaten boy, who doublechecked his façade. Aaron Ogden did not lift his head; at the Edwards house, he responded to his name only if it came from Rhoda or Matthias. “— _he_ is the one to congratulate. He was summoned from this house to rescue Alex from Death’s too-early embrace. Alex’s mother died not a week ago! A shame, a shame. May God give her peace in Heaven . . .”

Alexander’s fork shook in Aaron’s periphery. Out of what emotion, he could not tell, but his knuckles shone white and he stopped eating.

“Tapping says he’s knowledgable. As bright, if not brighter, than our dear Aaron! Despite his recent losses, he’s adjusting well. No problems. Right, Alex? No problems at all?” Tim leaned forward, ribs pressed against the table. Too earnest. Malice lingered in his studying, expectance, but also the worst emotions, the parts Aaron wished he could close himself from: warmth, pride, hope. It complicated. It always complicated. Aaron clenched his eyes shut as a sudden prayer filled his throat. ( _Lord, who is Uncle Timothy? Who is Tim? Please give me Your enlightening. I am trying. I am trying. Thank You, Lord._ ) “Alex?” Tim prompted when the answer stalled.

“No, sir, no problems at all,” Alexander gritted out.

“Good!”

Dinner ended, the last clutch of relatives dispersed, Aaron climbed the stairs, and again Sally’s question with her forceful concern.

“I got rejected from Princeton and didn’t tell anyone,” Aaron said.

“But why is he still acting like a dick? He already . . .” Sally’s lip trembled and she bit it to stop.

“I don’t know. Alexander did something. I slept until dinner.” Aaron wondered if she would hear him if he repeated it. _I was rejected from Princeton. Princeton University rejected my application._

Sally groaned. “Of course he did! Of course. Ugh. Just, be smart, okay, Junior?”

Aaron said his nightly prayers and crawled in bed. Alexander paced the floor, muttering and scribbling in the handheld notebook he had confiscated from Aaron, as Aaron tossed and turned on the bed attempting to find a spot that didn’t make his body ache. Eventually, Alexander tossed the notebook to the floor, huffed, and got into bed, kicking the blankets to the bottom and smashing his face against the wall. Aaron tossed and turned and dreamed of a ship in the sea. Rumors of pirates, gold-faced politician-captains, a weeping woman strapped to the bow, a vertical escape into the clouds, and a wind full of half-lost words.

~~~~~

“You realize your sister has the hots for Tapping, right?” Alexander said, draping his legs over Aaron’s lap.

“Sally is ten years younger than him. She’s _thirteen_ ,” Aaron pointed out, shoving off Alexander’s legs. Again.

“Half-way to fourteen. And when has that stopped anyone before?” He tried once more to put his legs over Aaron’s and grinned in victory when Aaron gave up and allowed them. “Come on, you’ve seen her. She falls asleep reading Locke, but when _Tapping_ talks about Locke, she can’t stop smiling.”

“He’s correct,” Jon interjected from the armchair, reading _The World According to Garp_ on top of a hardcover copy of _A Treatise of Human Nature_.

Aaron grimaced. “But why? Tapping looks like a potato.”

That knocked a laugh out of Alexander’s chest, almost rolling him off the couch. “You’re right. Or a mandrake root. Your sister has bad taste in men.”

“Let’s hope it’s a phase.”

“Sally Reeve. It has a nice ring to it.”

“ _No_.”

“They can’t take _her_ surname. Tapping Burr sounds like an improv troupe.”

“Or a friendly Irish setter,” Jon contributed.

“Or a useless invention created by a desperate homeless man,” Alexander said.

“Or a children’s book.”

“Enough, enough,” Aaron interrupted. He punched Alexander’s knee, inciting a mad giggle.

A moment passed.

“Or the name of a flea circus.”

“Alexander!”

~~~~~

The walls were bare and lonely.

When Aaron woke in the middle of the nights, especially on sore nights as skin darkened with busted blood vessels, this was his first thought. No posters, no pictures, no shelves. In the blinders of darkness, Aaron saw himself reflected back. Nothing to catch the scarce moonlight, to dance a shape into the nothing. A blank slate. A smooth-faced figure.

“Alexander?” Aaron rolled to his side, wincing at the pressure on his shoulders.

The boy’s silhouette jabbed out in the grotesque metal contortion of a demolished skyscraper’s girders. Light collected on the edges of his bones, its silent unnatural scream outlined within the darker outline of Alexander’s whole, and then it shimmered. Aaron believed he was back on his dream’s ship, mistaking the shimmer for that of an image’s unsteady underwater vanity. Alexander made a wet gasping sound, the sound water made when it sloshed against wood, and Aaron thought, _Is Alexander the sea?_

Then Alexander choked, “Go back to sleep.” Aaron’s sight corrected itself: the shimmering was the shudder of a repressed cry, and the gasp a strangled sob.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you aren’t.”

In a furious whirl, Alexander flipped around and hurled his pillow at Aaron like a missile. It thudded against the wall above him and fell on the bed. Alexander’s face was a nightmarish impression of darknesses embedded in deeper darknesses. “Leave me _alone_ , you dense motherfucker! I don’t need your help or your pity.” He flipped back over into his tortured curl of limbs.

Aaron gathered the pillow to his chest and hugged it, squeezing it hard enough to hurt until his tears receded. Without planning, he began talking. Unbeknownst to Alexander and himself, his poetry writing began in the air of midnight, sick with grief and secrets, when the font of his mind opened into cascades of pure nonsense – not comforting nonsense but the confusing, truthful kind of philosophy people from musicians to psychologists to oracles attempted to attain through the liberation of drugs where the subconscious or God peeked out from the otherside that only mantis shrimp saw with their sixteen color-receptive cones—

The words wound through the air, soft and meaningful in their meaningless, and Alexander did nothing, said nothing, until the shimmering stopped and he snored. Aaron kept talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jonathan Dayton was actually four years YOUNGER than Aaron Burr but his being older serves as a plot device so eyyy.
> 
> Also, thank you all so much for reading and leaving kudos and commenting! You give me joy; you're all great.


	3. No house phone but can I still call?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no see, you guys. Thanks for sticking around despite my busyness and writer's block! I'm still here, slowly slaving away, don't worry.

For two years: Aaron Burr shared a bedroom with Alexander Hamilton; they competed, pitted word against word in essays, literary analysis, debates, and wrestled with clauses and superlatives instead of fists, Tapping demoted to third fiddle in the clamor of two geniuses; Sally watched graphic, stomach-churning medical documentaries, imagined crises contained by steady hands, and flirted with a flustered, confused Tapping; Aaron prayed at night and Alexander did not; Jon smoked and dreamed of business suits and gunstocks as he sheltered Aaron and Alexander in his empty house; Aaron wrote poetry and Alexander wrote everything, overflowing, blurring into Aaron’s journals, Aaron’s books, Aaron’s space until Aaron lost sense of whose was whose or, at times, who was who. For two years, the pitch and tone of Aaron’s mind creaked like an unused voice.

And for two years, the plague of preteens for millennia, _puberty_.

For some, the sexual revolution of the ’70s was a welcome relaxation of restraints, the chastity belt of embarrassment strapped a tad looser and intimidated with fewer spikes. Sex education spread and pulled the pressure off parents to explain the complicated valves and tubes of the changing young body. And in the midst of this relieved era, the children of the highly religious remained terrified and shocked by themselves as if infiltrated from the inside by insidious chestbursters. Sally woke up on May third, her thirteenth birthday, in a bed soaked in blood, and she screamed in a pure and dark terror, the intensity of which she would never experience again. Worse, Tapping found her first. He froze in the doorway, exclaimed, “Oh my word!” and fled down the stairs to meet Uncle Timothy and Aunt Rhoda scrambling up them. Alexander busted open the door next, Aaron behind him, and they stood there dumbstruck until Aunt Rhoda shrieked and kicked them out of the room. It would be years until Sally talked or joked about it, when a child bounced on her knee and soft wrinkles began forming around her eyes and mouth.

“Unclean,” “sin,” “unnatural” floated through the house, vague, terse warnings. Sally had no defenses against them, no one to turn to, but Jon helped Aaron and Alexander dismiss fears of damnation and replace them with fears of contamination. He glossed over weird new hair growth and fluctuating voices and sex itself to quote STD facts and statistics learned from his private school’s sex ed. “Sometimes saliva can be a transmitter, though it has a much lower rate of infection,” he said.

“Do you really swap spit when you kiss?” Aaron asked.

Jon nodded, inscrutable as to whether his confidence drew from theoretical or empirical knowledge.

“That’s disgusting.” Alexander pretended to gag but retained a curious tilt to his expression.

Aaron glanced at Alexander’s lips for a brief, instinctual moment, wondering about the mechanics, the feeling, toxic spit and cumbersome tongue – he immediately slammed shut those thoughts and glared at the wall.

Jon grew tall, kept from weed-like by his square shoulders, and Aaron endured a growth spurt that flung him from five foot to nearly five foot five in six months, but Alexander remained hovering at Sally’s doll-sized five foot one, gaining a mere one inch in a year. Aaron’s voice dropped cleanly, but Alexander’s squeaked and thinned and broke, exacerbated by his incessant need to talk, and in empty reward his voice did not lower into a smooth bass but a reedy tenor. To compensate, he shouted louder than before until the entire house had a collective headache.

Uncle Timothy rubbed his temples. “How do you stand the two of them, Tapping?” he asked over dinner with mock severity, interrupting Aaron and Alexander’s escalating petty debate over the reliability of memoirs.

Tapping shook his head. “I have no clue, Timothy. I must admit, however, that I have never felt so enlightened in the presence of those so much younger than myself.”

“Neither have I.”

Aaron’s chest lightened with elation, and Alexander, impervious to Uncle Timothy’s gentle, motherly moods, rolled his eyes.

~~~~~

Lying in bed at night, unable to sleep, whether he was thirteen or forty-eight, Aaron Burr attempted to stitch together those two years into a conceivable whole. Wherever Alexander walked, destruction lay in his wake, and in the end Aaron didn’t recognize his family, didn’t recognize himself; it made him sick some nights from an emotion he couldn’t parse. The overwhelming shouting never ceased in his head, stirred up by every word, every glance of Alexander. _Most of my life_ , Burr will write, _has been spent off-kilter. I have stared at the world sideways long enough that it appears balanced_.

Time, the fickle custodian, shortens and lengthens as it pleases, some minutes stretching on for years and some decades flashing by in seconds. For Aaron, 1982 and 1983 composed a lifetime that lingered in the twitch of his fingers and the shadow of his tone, another layer beneath his skin that could be dug up and cut as any other, memories vivid like blood against a white shirt.

Alexander walked in, a mess that created a mess, disrupted routine after routine. He was too curt or he was too long-winded. He attempted to avoid church and mussed his formal outfit whenever possible, earning ire from Tim and Rhoda as fiery as the sermons they heard. He mocked everyone under his breath. He interrupted Tapping during lessons, he argued with Aaron over nonsense, he shouted over Sally, and the young Sarah and Edward grew to hate him for his mean-hearted dismissals. “Leave me alone,” he said, every hour of every day. “Get lost.”

“Why don’t you pray?” Aaron asked at night.

“I think about God enough already,” Alexander said to the wall.

Alexander talked but refused a two-way conversation. Each tentative press of “How are you?” or “Are you okay?” or “It’s fine,” left Aaron rebuffed, stomped and hurting in the dirt for all his troubles. _Love thy neighbor_ , he repeated to himself, but his neighbor proved himself feral, unloveable but in the small doses when a book captivated him or Jon’s steady civilization outweighed his irrationality. When he couldn’t force himself to sleep, he paced.

A slicing scream sent Sally and Aaron tumbling down the stairs to the kitchen. Rhoda and Alexander faced each other, the kitchen island between them, Rhoda wielding a pair of scissors, Alexander tensed to run with his breath squeezing out in hyperventilated gasps.

“He’s acting senseless,” Rhoda explained. “All I want to do is cut his hair, and he acts as if I’m chopping off his head. Grab him so I can get this over with.”

Alexander pleaded with his eyes, gibbered in Spanish no one understood; Aaron took a step back; Sally glanced between the three of them, raised a chin as she submitted and grappled Alexander. With ten minutes and the buzz of an electric razor, his head was shaved as close as Aaron’s and his screams had dissolved into little hiccuping cries.

 _I’m him_ , one piece of Aaron thought, at the same time another sneered, _You see how it feels?_ and another turned his body away and another found slick, coiled satisfaction. _God gives you what you give Him._

~~~~~

July 11th was little Sarah’s birthday and July 25th was Uncle Timothy’s birthday. In the Edwards tradition, instead of celebrating oneself with gifts and ruining oneself with greed and gluttony, the birthdays were condensed into one annual charity event – the biggest local event in Elizabeth. Uncle Timothy began the practice the year he received custody of Sally and Aaron. The airbrushed story he gave was, “I turned twenty-one that year and was struck by the realization that it was my duty to my Lord and His people to spread my prosperity to those that needed it much more desperately than myself.” Aaron knew his tells, how a lie brought the downward quirk of his mouth and the shifting eyes, the weight shift from one foot to another, the brushing over his sleeves as if the dust of his sins gathered on his shoulders. He did not show one sign; he believed it.

So, too, did Uncle Timothy believe the story he had told Aaron on the night of the fifth anniversary of the event. Timothy sat on Aaron’s bed and held the eight year old (bleeding from his lip, crying crying crying, _what did I do?_ ) to his chest and rocked them back and forth. Years away, voice faint, Uncle Timothy said that in the wake of the death of his stepbrother, his father, his sister, and his mother within a single year, he prayed to God, and, for the first time, God did not answer him. He was desperate to find His voice again, desperate to do anything to honor their memories, to feel – Uncle Timothy attempted to elaborate, but his throat thickened with tears he refused to shed and he halted to save his dignity.

Every year, Aaron replayed the words in his head. They never explained anything to him.

The event was held in the community center, far from the wealthy, expansive housing. Aaron liked it because it had the same blank, prescriptive atmosphere of a hospital without the sour possibility of death. People moved through the community center as if their every action made a difference, a quality Aaron envied, and though every year roughly the same people said and did roughly the same things, there was a tantalizing atmosphere of change and hope. “Any minute now,” he imagined their smiles saying. “Any minute now . . .”

At the 1982 event, four months after he mumbled deliriously into Aaron’s life, Alexander was the center of discussion as the hailed “latest great show of Timothy’s good grace.” Alexander attempted to avoid this by ditching the center, but Rhoda, wise to Alexander’s escapist behavior, dragged him back to the main room by a tight, unyielding grip on his ear.

“ _Puta_ ,” he hissed when she left.

“Calm down,” Aaron chided. He didn’t know what Alexander had said, but the tone alone was enough to carry meaning.

“Easy for you. You’re always so straightlaced I wonder if one day you’re going to snap in half under the weight of your own bullshit.”

“What about _you_? You think you’re fooling anyone?”

“Fuck you, man!”

“Fine,” Aaron snapped. “Good luck with Rhoda keeping an eye on you all night.”

He left Alexander to the well-meaning wolves and went in search of Robert Troup, his best option for company. He and Sally had an agreement not to linger next to each other for long during these events, lest any adults recognize them and coo about _those poor orphans_ ; the Daytons threw money at this event rather than attending; Tapping was home sick; Aaron found the company of Matthias and Aaron Ogden intolerable in public, too much posturing; which left Robert Troup, standing between his parents and attempting to nod off while upright. After Aaron exchanged pleasantries with his parents, Robert roused himself and the two skirted the crowds for the rest of the evening and snacked on the free buffet next to stooping old men with scraggly beards and thin shifty-eyed kids. Robert, muffled around the muffin shoved in his mouth and balancing five more in his arms, gabbed on about how French was the worst language and impractical in this day and age, he should’ve been learning German or Chinese or something, and how he was sick and tired of being dragged to places by his parents, he could stay home by himself, he was _ten_ not _five_ , and you’re doing okay, weren’t you, Aaron? Aaron liked Robert. He managed to simultaneously dismiss and care for any person he spoke to, and he had that harsh unpredictability and high volume that Aaron usually despised in normal children, but with Robert, he somehow couldn’t find a reason to complain, though he did roll his eyes the thirtieth time Robert asked him if he wanted a bite of his muffin, Aaron, you don’t know what you’re missing _out_ on—

He glimpsed Alexander through the crowd, Uncle Tim’s hand on his shoulder. The boy smiled at the adult speaking, the stretch of his lips painfully fake and shaky even from across the room.

“Whoa,” Robert said, too loud. “That’s him, right? Alex? He’s not looking too good.”

Aaron rolled his shoulders. He didn’t have a single bruise. Hadn’t had one since – his breath caught, he turned away from Tim, eyes on the floor. Robert, God bless him, furrowed his brow and said, “You’re not looking great either. What’s up?”

“Robert—”

Robert grimaced and stuffed half a muffin in his mouth. “You know, you can call me Rob or Bobby or whatever,” he said, spraying crumbs. “’S not like _I_ care.”

“ _Robert_ ,” Aaron emphasized. After a moment more of grumbling, the boy fell silent. “Could you – could you talk to Alexander? Like you said, he doesn’t look very well.”

Robert laughed. “You live with him. You do it.”

“He hates me. Anyway, doesn’t he look like he needs a muffin?”

Robert glanced between Aaron and Alexander, on the edge of a thought forming, then shrugged. “Why not?”

As soon as Robert turned away, Aaron bolted, ducking into a supply closet and curling into a ball in the corner, face tucked against his knees.

At the 1983 event, one year later, Alexander was no longer the main event, faded into the background of Uncle Timothy’s generosity along with Sally and Aaron. By 1983, Robert and Alexander are best friends, rough and tumble in flurries of friendly insults, pulling Aaron into their game by prodding persistence. Most of the event was spent plodding around the community center, avoiding Tim and Rhoda and making too much noise. Aaron felt invincible, buoyed off the others’ giggles and shoves, and during the car ride home, while Tim glared at Aaron and Alexander in the rearview mirror, he giggled and snorted and told Alexander, “This is the best night of my life.” No gloom followed him up the stairs or bothered his sleep, and Alexander even had the courtesy to turn off his desk lamp and go to bed before midnight.

In 1982, Aaron imagined Alexander’s face, pale and distressed and exhausted and hurt. Guilt flooded his chest like a spotlight, inexorable in its unveiling. He imagined the barrage of _You’re an orphan?_ and _Your mother died?_ and _What a brave dear_ and _How long ago was it? Just four months?_ and _What about your father?_ and _poor thing!_ – and _Calm down_ and _You think you’re fooling anyone?_ What was wrong with him? How could he say such cruel, pointless things? ( _What a lack of common decency, what an appallingly baseless judgement. You must think yourself quite high and mighty to make such rulings. He is worse off than you; his mother has been dead but four months right before his eyes! You apathetic bastard! Four months!_ )

Aaron sobbed into his knees. He attempted to pray for forgiveness but was blocked again and again by waves of disgrace. He felt himself standing in Alexander’s shoes, dwarfed by the leering monsters with their pointed inquiries slithering out of their mouth and constricting his limbs, his body, his throat. The world slurred dark around him like a chaotic nightscape, flashes of light like gunshots, and his knees threatened to buckle under the grinding, crushing, world weight of those gazes and those blasé concerns.

The car ride home was silent. Alexander cried during the night again, and Aaron, darkhearted and miserable, his throat stoppered by his own tears, crawled into Alexander’s bed. They slept back to back without a comment or further touch passed between them.

~~~~~

“Will you read this?” Aaron asked Tapping’s forehead. He couldn’t quite make eye contact, much like he couldn’t quite force himself to say “my essay.” He knew without Tapping’s thorough analysis that the paper had flaws. The flow was stilted, the structure was lopsided, and his argument was a messy string of unrelated thoughts.

“Of course I will. I’m always happy to oblige and encourage your academia.” Tapping smiled, a perfunctory gesture bred of politeness. Aaron handed him his notebook and refused to check whether Tapping’s eyes showed warm sincerity or betrayed stiff awkwardness. Aaron sat on the edge of an adjacent chair and fixed his eyes on the closest shelf of books. The two were alone in the house library, a scene familiar enough to be sense memory: the sunlight glowing through the thin curtains, the neutral distance between their chairs, Tapping nodding along to the rhythm of the written word, the tight spiral staircase peeking between the close bookshelves that led to the second level. He had sat here with Tapping Reeve for four years, the same chairs growing worn under his fingertips, the same paced eloquence as Tapping outlined this or that. It settled him, calmed his pulse.

Tapping flipped to the beginning of the passage and gestured to catch Aaron’s attention.

“So?” Aaron asked, clenching his pant legs.

Tapping did not rush to answer. He took his time, glanced through the pages again and pursed his lips as his response formed. “It’s captivating, finely crafted, wonderful, of course. To speak no ills of your argument, your stucture could very well be mistaken for an architect’s blueprint of a bridge, very sturdy. Your voice remains relatively weak in comparison, but in proportion to your other skillful feats, you’re more than advanced for—” _don’t say it_ “—someone of your age.”

“Someone of my age,” Aaron sneered. He attempted to calm himself, smother the ire flaring in his belly, but Tapping sighed, about to say _Mr. Burr_ with that disappointment in his face, and Aaron couldn’t smooth his glare.

“Mr. Burr,” Tapping said, “you may despise it, but growth must be bonded to time. Your mind may outpace your body, but it, too, is needful of time to grow. No man has become a monk or a knight overnight. It takes time. More importantly, it takes patience.”

“I _am_ patient,” Aaron gritted out. “I just need to work harder.”

Tapping smiled again, fake and polite. “You want to go to Princeton University.”

“I’m applying again this year. As the sophomore I _should_ be.”

“You have no idea how to survive on your own; you have never left your family.”

“You think that’s my fault?”

Tapping quieted, stared at the floor. Cheery red hardwood covered with thick circular rugs depicting Revolutionary War battles, as Uncle Timothy’s preferred brand of patriotism was bloody. Under their feet was Lexington and Concord. Tapping took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. For a moment, he looked young, young enough to be Jon’s age. Aaron remembered that when he and Sally met Tapping Reeve, Aaron seven and Sally nine and Tapping eighteen, he was fresh from his Princeton graduation and sweating through his expensive suit in anxiety as Uncle Timothy and Aunt Rhoda interrogated him about behavior, curriculum, living arrangements, expectations. Church on Wednesday and Sunday, no smoking, no drinking, no gambling, no hussies for girlfriends, no skipping family dinner, no slovenliness, no procrastination, no disrespect of Tim and Rhoda’s wishes, and absolutely no patronizing the children’s intelligence, maturity, or capabilities. Peeking from around the corner, Sally and Aaron had whispered about Tapping’s shiny face, how his close-cropped hair and clunky glasses made him look childish or middle-aged.

“That is a philosophical debate for another time, Mr. Burr,” Tapping hedged as he slipped his glasses back on. “It does not alter your lack of preparation for the collegiate experience. Now, may you please collect Mr. Hamilton and Miss Burr for today’s lesson?”

~~~~~

Night time again. Aaron’s latest poem was scrawled across his arm, illegible against his skin to all but him, and now he scrawled it in his notebook by the small light of his desk lamp. Somehow, Alexander watched him with his back to him.

“I read through your notebook,” Alexander told him.

Aaron resisted the urge to break his pen in half. He forced the image of Alexander trembling, Alexander screaming, to the forefront. “I guess my permission doesn’t matter, and you’ll read this tomorrow then.”

“I like it, is what I was getting at.”

“Thanks.”

Aaron copied down another three lines.

Alexander turned over. “What’s this one about?”

~~~~~

As per usual, the hodgepodge family filed into their pews an hour before anyone else. The adults – Uncle Timothy, Aunt Rhoda, and Tapping – made small talk with the preacher, while the rest were expected to sit straight and have restrained, upright conversations. The wind-up to the service was long, and the wind-up within the service was itself long, exaggerated, overdone. By hour two of standing, Aaron’s feet hurt and Sally was jumping from foot to foot to relieve the pain as the preacher held out his hands and proclaimed loud facts about damnation, loud verses about damnation, sprinkled with angry insistences on unconditional love and never-tiring toiling hands. The man was so red-faced he looked demonic, as did the entire congregation as the noise grew, expanded from the occasional “praise the Lord!” to a rumble to a roll of thunder.

As the sermon rose to its fever pitch, every man, woman, and child yanked to their feet by the spirit of God, Sally leaned over and whispered in Aaron’s ear, “Get me the hell out of here, Jesus Christ.” As the churchgoers around him sweated and shook in their feeling, Aaron broke down laughing at the incongruity of it all, his sister’s casual blasphemy and Alexander’s half-bored, half-terrified expression against the writhing backdrop of whirling wrath and fleeting forgiveness. The church was old but its speakers were new; its preacher ancient but his headset scratchless; its fervor antediluvian but its denouncements in flux – drugs! violence! fast food restaurants! phones! atheism! sports cars! Democrats! homosexuals! the President! Russia! China! Catholics! Hallelujah!

Aaron couldn’t stop laughing. This was ridiculous. He threw up his arms and yelled, “Hallelujah!” as loud as he could, drowned out by the others. Who was anyone kidding here? Was everyone acting? Aaron feared so much, he felt it gnawing on his soul. Was it a sin to laugh? To find God’s servants ridiculous? Guilt would gobble up his soul before devotion could. The noise floated up to the high ceiling, bounced off the intricately carved walls and stained glass windows and back down to the waving arms to add to the cacophony. The echoes bounced off his bones, inside his skull alongside the laughter stealing his breath.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna message me anything, I'm over at the barren landscape of tonguetiedandsqueamish.tumblr.com


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